Now that we have our framework for our SMART collection, we need to add some sub-tools to get the work done. For this, we will be adding three tools within the collection: A Scope Check tool, an Action Plan, and a Metrics table to capture the before/after measurements.

First, we will add a Checklist tool, to let us list the initiatives or corrections we could put in place, then utilize the checkmarks to define which are in-scope, and more importantly, out-of-scope.

Add a new Checklist tool by using the “Add Tool – Browse Tool Catalog…”, then on the “Basic” list, select “Checklist”.

This time, instead of “moving it to the bottom” of the canvas, we are going to add it to the collection instead. To do this, each tool has a “More Actions” option. In that menu, you should see “Move To Collection…”

Here, we will move it to our SMART Goal #1 collection.

At this point, your canvas for your template is getting fairly complicated. Please note that on the left-side of your template, you will find the “Work Items” section. This section essentially lists out your tools in the template (or when live, an actual activity). It is simple to just navigate down the tool list by clicking on the focus item you wish to review. For example, if we click on the SMART Goal #1 collection, we will see the list of sub-tools within the collection. Here we see our newly added (unnamed) checklist.

Click on the Checklist in the canvas, and rename it to “#1 – Brainstorming / Scope Check”. Then add 2 Action Items to the tool: one for Brainstorming, and another for scope check. Your final tool will look like this.

Next, we want to add a Timeline tool to the collection. Again we use “Add Tool – Browse Tool Catalog…”. The Timeline tool is located in the Coordinating section.

Remember to move it to the collection:

Rename the Timeline to “#1 – Action Plan”, and add an Action Item to prompt the team to create the action plan.

The final tool we will add is a simple table to keep track of our metrics. Again, we use the “Add Tool – Browse Tool Collection…”. Tables are located on the “Basic” list.

Move your table to the Collection.

Finally, setup your table with 3 columns (Metric, Before, After), and delete the 4th through 8th rows (3 metrics are usually fine). Rename your table, and create an Action Item for the team to fill it in. Your SMART Goal #1 should now be complete.

Finally, we need to duplicate our efforts for SMART Goal #1 to create SMART Goal #2 and SMART Goal #3. There is a “copy” function of each collection that will help us achieve this. The Copy function is located under the “More Actions” menu of the collection.

This will copy the items within the Collection to a new collection within a template. Be sure to select your Six Sigma template. Now, you simply have to rename all of the items within the collection. (NOTE: You may need to refresh your browser window in order to see the new collection within your template)

You can move the new collection to the bottom of the list by selecting the grey-bar next to the collection when you hover over it. When you do this, you can click-and-drag the collection down to the bottom of the canvas (after the #1 goal).

Now, rename the collection and the tools to represent SMART Goal #2.

IMPORTANT: There currently is an issue (or feature?) with the Copy function. It DOES NOT copy any action items. So, this means that you will have to go back through every tool within SMART Goal #2, and re-create those action items within the template. Kinda a bummer!

Finally, copy the SMART Goal #1 one more final time, and make it SMART Goal #3. Remember to rename all tools, and re-create your Action Items as above. You should end up with a template and a Canvas that looks very much like this:

That’s it. Your StreamWork Six Sigma template is now complete. This template should help define a winning process to focus teams, and tackle any form of challenge within your company. In the next section, we will walk you through an example project, to see how all the pieces come in to play.

Now that we have our possible solutions defined and prioritized for our Top Driver, we can let the team focus on 3 of these, define them as S.M.A.R.T. goals, and work the resolutions to the problem. To do this, we are going to utilize a couple of tools, encapsulated inside a StreamWork Collection. The collection will let us group several tools together, collating them. Each of these grouped toolsets will represent a SMART goal – so all in all, we will have 3 collections.

We will create the first Collection, then use the StreamWork “copy” function to copy the first collection 2 more times. So, for this part, we simply want to add a single new Collection.

To do this, we again use our “Add Tool / Browse Tool Catalog” button, and in the list, select “Basic”, then “Collection”.

Don’t forget to move it to the bottom of the canvas.

We will now name our collection “SMART Goal #1”, and we will add some instructions on how to use it.

Finally, we will add a single action item to “assign” the setting of the goal to the team when a new project is kicked off.

Essentially, we will be adding 3 tools within this collection – a Scope Check tool, an Action Plan tool, and place to define Metrics to be sure our corrective actions have paid off.

Now that we have given a place for the team to identify the key Drivers, we need to give them the ability to brainstorm ideas to resolve the Top Driver, and assign an overall priority for each idea. This will help them decide which items to focus on – not just that it is a “driver”, but that the overall priority of the possible resolution (how hard, versus how big a payoff) is reasonable and valuable.

To do this, we will add a PICK matrix to our template. There, the team will be able to identify bullets of opportunity, prioritized along an Effort versus Payoff scale, to better visualize which quadrant of change they should focus on.

Next, rename the PICK matrix to “Brainstorm Drivers – Priority Matrix”. You can then add a single Action Item to assign to the team to fill in the matrix.

Finally, lets add some instructions for the team to give them guidance on how best to fill in the matrix.

That wraps up our priority matrix. We now have given the team the capability to visualize their proposed resolutions to the top-driving issue. In our next section, we will create 3 sections to allow the team to identify the top 3 they will focus on, and capture their process within each section. To do this, we will create a StreamWork collection.

Now that we have our Affinity Diagram created, we need to allow the team to identify the Drivers and Outcomes as each item relates to each other. This will help us prioritize our Affinity Diagram, and give us 2 to 3 clear items to focus on and drive the most change within the process improvement stream.

To do this, we will add a DACI Matrix to our template, and customize the choices. As usual, we select “Add Tool”, but this time we need to “Browse Tools Catalog” to find the DACI Matrix.

Remember to move your new matrix to the end of the template stream.

First, we can rename our Matrix. In our template, we renamed it “Relationship Diagram – Define the Drivers”. We also setup our columns and rows to be equal (The matrix only defaults to 3 rows. We simply add a category row to match the corresponding category columns). In the end, the user will change the category (both row title, and column title) to match the categories created within the Affinity table. This just serves as a placeholder for now.

The second thing to set up is to limit the amount of options within the Row/Column pairing. By default, all options within the DACI matrix are available. Since we only need to define the Drivers, we will limit the drop down selection in the matrix to just that value. Click on the “Edit Properties” option within the matrix, and only specify “Drives” as an option.

Finally, we will make sure our Relationship Diagram has action, so we will create an action item that will later be assigned to the team to fill it out.

That’s about it for our matrix. We will just add some quick instructions on the About tab to be sure users know how to fill it in.

In our next part, we will allow the team to brainstorm these driving categories for possible solutions, and prioritize based on difficulty and payoff.

In our next section, we want to further dissect our 4m. Usually when you make a 4m, you will often have several “like” ideas within the different M’s. For example, you may have a an issue listed under Man which states “Sales staff don’t often know the cutoff quantities for the various discount levels during discussions with the customer”, and you may have similar issue under Materials which states “Management hasn’t provided updated breakdown tables for discounts on the various product families”. To that, you may want to bind those two ideas into one single category called “Discount Training & Documentation”.

We do this with an Affinity Diagram. In StreamWork, we again use a simple table where we can lump these “like” issues together from the 4m, then give it a “category” that encapsulates the general idea or topic.

To add our Affinity Diagram to the template, we again use the “Add Tool” button, and select “Table”.

The table will again pop up to the top. No worries, we can use the “Move To Bottom” button to put it at the bottom of the canvas.

Now, we will title the table “Affinity Diagram – Categorize Your 4m”, and leave 2 columns – “Category” and “Items From 4m”. (Note: We usually leave 8 rows, and in the instructions, we try to “limit” the number of categories to no more than 8. We feel this is best-practices when categorizing your 4m.)

Next we have to remember to give our Affinity Diagram some accountability, so again we will build an Action Item to have someone fill it out. (Remember to make it unassigned for now)

Finally, we will add our instructions into the About tab.

That wraps up our Affinity Diagram. We can now move onto the next section, and define a Relationship Diagram to help the team identify the Drivers and Outcomes in relation to these newly defined categories. Click here to read the next part.

Next, we will add a 4m section to our template. We use the 4m to get a good understanding of where the team feels there are issues within the current process. It also lets them focus their thoughts within a single category at a time – meaning we fill in the Man first, then the Machine, then the Materials, then the Methods – ensuring we document everything within the current category before moving on to the next category.

For us, the 4m (Man, Machine, Materials, Methods) translates more to the business categories “Sales staff/Operations Staff/Admins/Management/Production”, “Computers/Servers/Phones/Technology/Software”, “Collateral/Presentations/Instructions/Catalogs/Website”, and “Processes/Tasks/Required Action/Expediting”. We feel this provides the team with a good definition of “what” to put inside each category.

To add this to our template, we will add a simple Table tool to our template-in-progress. First, click on the Add Tool button, then select Table.

This should insert a new table into your template. However, StreamWork always adds a new tool to the “top”. No worries, we will simply click on the “Move To Bottom” option, which will move it to the end of the template.

Once at the bottom, we will retitle the table “4m – Identify All Current Pain Points”, as well as rename the column headers “Man”, “Machine”, “Method”, and “Materials”. The final table should look like this: (Note: on a few occasions, the column-rename function wasn’t working as expected. You may need to play with it, but in the end I double-clicked on the column headers, typed in my new title, then clicked on the cell just below it to “save” the change)

Finally, we want to setup an Action Item to make sure the team can keep track of “when” it gets filled out. We can do so from the Action Items sidebar on the Table (like before). Remember to make sure it is unassigned.

Finally, give your users any specific instructions on filling out the 4m by using the “About” tab.

At Traction Consulting Group, we have created our own custom process to improve sales and operations processes, while ahering to the Six Sigma toolset. These series of posts will not only walk you through it, but also give you a good background in StreamWork and how you may be able to apply it within your own process improvement initiatives.

Create a new StreamWork template

Log into StreamWork. Once there, click on the “Activities” tab.

Once there, click on “My Templates”, then click on the “New Template” button. This will initiate the creation of a new blank template in StreamWork.

Once you have the New Template screen, give it a name and a description.

You should then be taken into a blank “work canvas”.

Here, we want to add our first Tool, the “Decision”. To do this, click on the “Add Tool” button, and you should see it directly in the list:

Once the Decision tool is added, you need to change the description, and add the “template” text to define the Problem Statement. To do so, click on the title of the tool “Decision”, and it should automatically turn into a Edit box. Here you can see I changed the name of my box to “Problem Statement”. Next, you need to define “what” needs to be decided. Here, I have added some default text to frame the problem statement – essentially I want to make sure that for every project we are defining the problem, as well as tie it to some form of ROI.

Once done, click on the “Save” button to save the Problem Statement section.

Now that we have our Problem Statement section created, we need to make sure it has “action”. You see, in StreamWork, the primary Activity is just a placeholder – maybe someone comes here and fills it out, maybe they don’t. Instead, each Tool within StreamWork can have “Action Items”. These serve as the To Dos of the system.

So, in this case, I am going to make a two Action Items – one noting that we need to define this problem statement and the ROI, and a second assigned to the management team to “approve” or decide on this project. To do this, I need to click on the Action Items tab next to the Problem Statement, and click on the “New Action Item” button.

For the first action item, I am simply going to ask a set of users to finish this section, and mark it “complete”. However, since this is a template, I do not want to assign it right now – so I will make an “unassigned” task. (When I kick off a live project later in this series, you will see how the “assignments” come into play).

Next, I will create a second Action Item which will later be assigned to the manager to approve this project scope and projected ROI. (For this task, note how I left the “To be completed by” person. This is due to to the fact that I approve all of the scope and ROI statements before sending to the customer. So, no need to do additional assigning work later – we can take care of this now in the template).

Once this is done, you should then be able to see both tasks in the Action Items list of the Tool.

The final step is to give your Tool some detailed instructions. This is mostly helpful in providing “self service” instructions to your users. We can do this on the “About” tab of the tool.

That’s it! Your Template is now under way – you have the first section done. Next we will add a way to document the 4m for this project. Stay tuned!

Like this:

We have been working with SAP StreamWork for a few weeks now. One way in which we are starting to leverage it is in our Six Sigma efforts.

At Traction, we apply Six Sigma methods to sales and operations problem solving. It helps us visualize a clear picture, and ensures we are targeting the most cost-effective path to resolving the problem.

As such, I will be documenting how we have StreamWork set up to do this. In the process, I feel you will then get a good understanding of the tool, and how it might be useful for other processes like decision management and project management.

Intro to SAP StreamWork

I won’t waste too much time describing StreamWork in this series of posts, except to explain the “idea” of StreamWork, and what its core focus is. If you wish to dive deeper, you can do so on the StreamWork web site to watch the demo: About StreamWork

StreamWork is an ad-hock “decision support” tool. It has a bunch of widgets that you can essentially assemble together to form a documented stream of discussions/ideas/topics. For example, you may want to track strategic initiatives within your company. You can create a new “activity” in StreamWork that contains a collection of tools like a SWOT analysis, a decision matrix, agendas, pros/cons tables, and more. The activity stream holds these tools together to allow you to document the process, and track “where” exactly an initiative is in its life-cycle.

Each tool within the activity can have a set of “action items”. These become the “tasks” of the system. So, I may have a tool (as above) where we identify the pros and cons of health care packages for my company. Within this tool, there may be several tasks. In this case, I make a single task for my executive team to review the packages, and list out all available pros and cons. I give them a deadline of the 15th.

The task is then trackable within the Activity itself, as well as on the overall Activity Dashboard. (They also get reminder via email, and there is an Outlook connector to sync the task into Outlook).

To us, this presents the case for tracking our Traction Six Sigma (TSS) project efforts for our customers in a more collaborative format. Since our TSS processes require a lot of decision and analysis points, we can capture these within StreamWork, as well as keep track of what activity relating to the key decision points is still open. StreamWork also allows us to extend visibility to the customer using its built-in security functions.

About This Series

I have decided to create this post as a “series” of posts over time. There will be a lot to document. Each week I will add a link or two to the series, so bookmark the page and check back often. (Also, each new page will link back to this page, so you can always get back to the “table of contents” if need be).

Finally, if you have some projects coming up soon, and can’t wait for the whole write-up, feel free to shoot me a call, and I will do my best to help you out.